Learn about Online media law — Online for Free!

On NewsUniversity.org I took a free online course called Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers. the course had good quality information about defamation, copyright infringement, and privacy invasion.

Here’s a summary of the course:

1) The first point I learned was about DeFaMaTiOn.

In brief, defamation means that one’s reputation is injured. In other words…we can be guilty of defamation if something we project any false statement to anyone but the plantiff. ie. it can be through a blog post, something published on the Internet or Web site or even a third-party email.

There are two types of defamation that I learned about and they are written defamation and spoken defamation.

2) Point number two is InVaSiOn Of PrIvAcY

I learned that invasion of privacy is more like binoculars and tiny microphones and coming onto private scenes rather than regular reporting on things that people don’t necessarily want seen by other people.

3) Point number three is CoPyRiGhT InFrInGeMeNt

When asking yourself what can be copyrighted…ideas and names cannot. The copyright law is a federal law which is in place to protect the “original works of authorship” in legal terms.

Overall, I think the course had good information. Although, the nature of the topic was a little much for the duration of the course. It was hard to understand, in my opinion because there were so many “if’s, or’s, and but’s” to it. With it being about law, that is expected.

The course did include practice senario examples which helped but as far as having a good grasp of the whole concept, I may have missed it. I may have to go over the course a few more times because there is a lot of information there. It’s a little hard to take in all at once. It may have been because all this was fairly new to me.

As my Bible professor would say, “we learn in layers”;in other words, we build upon what we already know.